donosaur wrote:Failing to ever find a clearanced Ultra Magnus, I went and bought Animated BlackArachnia to round out my Animated collection. After buying two of the allegedly better ROTF deluxes in a row, I have decided I'm just really not that interested in the movie aesthetic. This BA figure is so much more captivating and, frankly, playworthy than Sideswipe and Sideways, at least to me. I guess the Animated style really spoke to me, they're pretty, fun, well designed, and just more "neat" overall. Alas. The new movie toys are neat in a different way, i just need to align my brainwaves to it.
Hmm, this does intrigue me. I don't like Animated Blackarachnia very much at all. She's flimsy, bits pop off, her hands are sideways, her kibble annoys me, her spider legs are all at odd angles, and the transformation is unsatisfying. I bought her some time ago, went "Oh", and promptly attached her to a shelf by the too-short grappling line, where it tilted her robot neck and made it look like she'd hung herself. This so amused me that she stayed that way until i moved six months ago.
I've messed around with her recently, and she's just not a figure that does anything for me. I feel no sense of Beast Era nostalgia from that figure (Which is not to say I don't have any, as the BWR-01 10th anniversary set is among my favourite TF items EVARRR), and find it a shining example of Animated as whole. Interesting characters, neat designs, boring and poorly engineered action figures. I can understand why they did not sell next to the ultra-cool-looking Movie stuff, which lacks in personality and makes up for it by looking pointy, shiny, and anti-kiddie-aesthetic.
Blackarachnia's certainly a tidier design than, for example, Sideways, as most parts have a place and both modes are fairly 'clean'. She's a swifter transform, which usually lends better to fiddling. Yet I like Sideways a lot more, and not just because he's a very detailed death machine with a sawblade on his forearm. He's clearly a complex toy representing a complex design, and doesn't pretend to be anything else.
If Animated had had the chunky, cheerful, ultimately playable engineering level I'd expected it to based on the designs, it would've been a fun line, if ultimately for kids. As-is, it never knew where it wanted to go, had no consistency, and half the figures have engineering problems. This irritated me a lot. Although I bought most of the line and enjoyed the show, I can easily turf most of the figures into storage without a second glance, which is a shame. The movie stuff compells me to fiddle with it, even if it's only to rearrange the kibble.
To be fair, I disliked a lot of Universe for not having the 'heart' of Classics, so it's not just me picking on Animated. I'm kinda glad it's over, though.
Anyway. I got stuff! I did! AWESOME STUFF.
Encore Omega Supreme.
And I
Wrote Stuff About Him Here.
More for everyone else, I guess.
